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HTC Loses $40 Million from OnLive Bankruptcy

Steven Blum2012-08-20T15:29:15ZAug 20, 2012

Steven Blum
Steven Blum has written more than 2,000 blog posts as a founding member of AndroidPIT's English editorial team. A graduate of the University of Washington, Steven Blum also studied Journalism at George Washington University in Washington D.C. for two years. Since then, his writing has appeared in The Stranger, The Seattle P-I, Blackbook Magazine and Venture Villlage. He loves the HTC One and hopes the company behind it still exists in a few years.

Oh man. I'm starting to get upset over all the bad news coming out of HTC. First the fim completely closed down operations in Brazil, then it announced revenues were down 27% since the same quarter last year and now we've just found out that the company is losing out on $40 million from a failed investment in OnLive, the streaming game company. That's not a whole lot of money to go missing from agiant OEM but still.

HTC supposedly invested in OnLive to build on their own street cred, but that plan backfired when the game company slid into bankrupcy. All of OnLive's 150-200 staff have been laid off, and the future of the company is totally up in the air. While it could be that the company re-forms in a different shape, it could also completely dissolve in the near future.

Meanwhile, Sony successfully acquired OnLive's (superior) competitor Gaikai a while back, and will likely integrate their PS3 games into the streaming game company's online library over the next few months. With competitors like Sony snatching up these valuable game companies and Samsung taking the lionshare of profits, HTC is going to need to come up with a stellar strategy in the coming months, especially after the new iPhone 5 is released.